Pygmies of Africa

Short people known as pygmies are scattered across equatorial Africa, where they speak various languages, inhabit different types of forests, and hunt and gather food in diverse ways. Despite their cultural variety, a new study shows that the pygmies of Western Central Africa descended from an ancestral population that survived intact until 2800 years ago when farmers invaded the pygmies' territory and split them apart. Many anthropologists define pygmy as a member of any group where adult men are on average less than 150 cm (4 feet 11 inches) tall.
The ‘Pygmy’ peoples of central Africa are traditionally hunter-gatherers living in the rainforests throughout central Africa.

The term ‘Pygmy’ has gained negative connotations, but has been reclaimed by some indigenous groups as a term of identity.
Primarily though, these communities identify themselves as ‘forest peoples’ due to the fundamental importance of the forest to their culture, livelihood and history.
Each is a distinct people, such as the Twa, Aka, Baka and Mbuti living in countries across central Africa, including the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Uganda and Cameroon.
Different groups have different languages and hunting traditions. Although each community faces different threats and challenges, racism, logging and conservation are major problems for many, all contributing to serious health problems and violent abuse.
Current estimates put the population of the ‘Pygmy’ peoples at about half a million.
The origins of pygmies have long been a mystery. Researchers have debated whether African pygmies inherited their height from a common ancestor they shared long ago or whether shortness evolved independently in each tribe because it was advantageous for life in the forest. For instance, getting enough calories to grow taller might have been more challenging than in more open terrain. Pygmies grow up just like other modern humans until they become teenagers, when they fail to undergo a final adolescent growth spurt.
In the largest study of Western Central Africans to date, anthropological geneticist Paul Verdu of the Musee de l'Homme (Museum of Man) in Paris and colleagues analyzed DNA from nine pygmy groups and 12 neighboring groups of people who were of normal height. The researchers report in this week's issue of Current Biology that although the pygmies have a lot of genetic diversity, they probably can trace their ancestry to the same population that could have lived as recently as 2800 years ago, says Verdu.
In the most likely scenario, a small group of short people split off from nonpygmy populations between 50,000 and 90,000 years ago. The founding group of pygmy ancestors was fairly cohesive, with tribes interbreeding until 2800 years ago. At that point, taller Bantu-speaking farmers probably swept across central Africa and pushed them apart. Once the pygmy groups split, they stopped interbreeding. As a result, each group evolved separately. Even today, they seldom know of each other's existence, says Verdu.
The importance of the forest as their spiritual and physical home, and as the source of their religion, livelihood, medicine and cultural identity cannot be overstated.
Traditionally, small communities moved frequently through distinct forest territories, gathering a vast range of forest products, collecting wild honey and exchanging goods with neighbouring settled societies.
Hunting techniques vary among the forest peoples, and include bows and arrows, nets and spears.
But many communities have been displaced by conservation projects and their remaining forests have been degraded by extensive logging, expansion by farmers, and commercial activities such as intensive bush-meat trading.
Few have received any compensation for the loss of their self-sufficient livelihoods in the forest and face extreme levels of poverty and ill-health in ‘squatter’ settlements on the fringes of the land that was once theirs.
In Rwanda for example, many Twa people who have been displaced from their lands earn a living by making and selling pottery.
Now this livelihood is threatened by the loss of access to clay through the privatisation of land and by the increasing availability of plastic products.

Begging and selling their labour cheaply have become the only options left to many displaced and marginalized forest peoples. Various theories have been proposed to explain the short stature of pygmies. The greatest environmental problem facing Pygmies seems to be the loss of their traditional homeland, the tropical forests of Central Africa.